Saturday, March 19, 2016

As part of the GLA election campaign an Election Question
time organized by the local National Union of Teachers took place in Richmond (London South West). Even
though the Greater London Talking Shop has no responsibility for education,
poverty and inequality, affordable housing and exam factory conditions need to
be discussed. In fact, during this election, the Socialist Party will be
bringing up much broader issues: capitalism as the cause of these and many
other problems and that there is no solution to them within one country.
Capitalism is a world system whose economic laws limit what any government can
do. Only worldwide socialism can provide the only framework in which they can
be constructively and lastingly solved.

Twenty or so people turned up for this Education Question
Time. Our candidate, Adam Buick, got equal time with the others.

Education for competitiveness

The discussion was mainly, but not entirely, on education.
In answer to the last question, the other candidates confirmed our candidate's
assertion that under capitalism the education system's main role was to turn
out for employers, workers of required types in the required numbers. They, and
NUT Deputy General Secretary Kevin Courtney, spoke in terms of the need for a
better education system in Britain to improve Britain's competitive position on
the world market. Only the UKIP
candidate, Alan Craig, dissented a little, saying he agreed with the socialist
candidate that this was not what education should be about. A bit embarrassing
but then he is a Christian and so probably has a pre-capitalist view of
education. He had in fact been the leader of the Christian Peoples Alliance
until 2013 when he defected to UKIP. He wasn't heckled, so Richmond NUT can't
have any SWP members as the SWP pursue a no-platform policy towards UKIP. He
spoke last and got in a plug for the Vote Leave EU campaign. He was surprised to learn that the Socialist Party weren't in favour of this but
were neither for nor against as he expected a socialist to be against "the
capitalist EU".

The Labour candidate, Martin Whetton, is the Merton
Council's Cabinet Member for Education, i.e a full-time professional
politician. He used up most of his 5-minute introduction urging people to vote
for Sadiq Khan as Mayor of London. Incidentally, there's a full-page ad for him
in this week's London local papers painting him as "The Council Estate Boy
who will fix the Tory Housing Crisis". Oh yes? So he's going to buck the
law of supply and demand? The Liberal spokesperson (not a candidate for the
constituency but on the LibDems all-London list), Merlene Emerson, said she was
from Singapore and is the founder of the Chinese Liberal Democrats. Which may
explain the presence of a reporter/photographer from a free English-language
paper available in Soho.

What our candidate said:

"We
are standing in this election to raise the issue of capitalism or socialism.

Are
we going to keep the present system of ownership by the few and production for
profit, which is the root cause of most of the problems people face and which
we are going to be discussing this evening? Or as we going to move on to a new
and different system based on common ownership and democratic control, which
will provide a framework inside of which these problems can be lastingly solved
because it will allow production to be directly geared to meeting people’s needs instead of
for sale on a market with a view to profit?

We
make no apology for raising this issue at a local election. It so happens that
this meeting is taking place the day after
the Budget when the finance minister of one of the world’s leading
capitalist countries confessed that world market conditions were blowing him
off course and forcing him to revise the government’s spending plans and impose
yet more cuts to essential services.

Since
most of local councils’ money comes from central government, these cuts trickle
down and affect the local services and amenities that councils provide. So,
yes, the fact that we are living under capitalism is very definitely relevant
to what happens at local level.

These
cuts to essential services and amenities show that capitalism is not a system geared to
meeting people’s needs. It’s a profit-making system in which making profits
comes first. It’s a Profits Before People system.

Yesterday’s
Budget is a good example. In fact every budget has been since the Great Crash
of 2008 (caused by capitalist firms and banks overproducing and overlending in
pursuit of profits). In each of them government spending on essential services
have been relentlessly cut. In each of them Corporation Tax (which used to be
called Profits Tax) has been reduced. Yesterday Osborne announced that this tax
is go down again, to 17%. At the same time he announced drastic cuts to
payments to the disabled.

Could
there be a better example of how capitalism puts profits before needs?

What
can be done about it? The other parties represented on this platform imagine,
despite all the evidence to the contrary, that capitalism can be reformed so as
to work in the interest of the majority. And they come up with various
proposals to do this (some of which no doubt you’ll hear this evening). But,
when in office, they don’t deliver. Which earns them the reputation of being
makers of empty promises. They can’t deliver because it’s not governments that
control the way capitalism operates. It’s the other way round: the economic laws of capitalism limit what
government can do. No government can change capitalism’s spots.

What
is required is something much more radical. The complete abolition of the
capitalist profit system. It has to be replaced by a system of common ownership
and democratic control of productive resources, which will allow production to
be geared to directly satisfying people’s needs and not for profit, and for goods
and services to be distributed and used in accordance with the principle “from
each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” instead of
by the amount of money you have (or don’t have)

In
short, socialism in its original sense (not what used to exist in Russia or
what the Labour Party used to do). "